This application claims the benefit of Korean Application Nos. 2001-64803 and 2002-18124, filed Oct. 19, 2001 and Apr. 3, 2002, respectively, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a refrigerator for cosmetics and a method of controlling the same, and specifically, to a refrigerator that optimally preserves cosmetics at a temperature that is best suitable for a user""s skin type and a season.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, cosmetics serve to protect the skin, preserve moisture, and prevent impurities in the atmosphere from being brought into contact with the skin. When cosmetics are used while being kept in the atmosphere, the cosmetics may easily deteriorate by the influence of the atmosphere. If deteriorated cosmetics are used on the skin, pores are plugged, the skin becomes rough and skin diseases may result. It is desirable to preserve cosmetics in a low humidity and cool environment. To this end, there increases a demand for a refrigerator for cosmetics.
Accordingly, the present invention has been made keeping in mind the above and other problems occurring in the related art, and an object of the present invention is to provide a refrigerator for cosmetics and a control method thereof, where the refrigerator optimally preserves cosmetics at a temperature that is best suitable for a user""s skin type and the season.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and, in part, will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention.
In order to accomplish the above and other objects, an embodiment of the present invention provides a refrigerator for cosmetics having a storage chamber and a cooling unit to cool the storage chamber, an input unit to receive one or more storage conditions from a user, a storage unit to store storage reference temperatures predetermined to correspond to possible storage conditions, a temperature detecting unit to detect a temperature of the storage chamber; and a control unit to control an operation of the cooling unit based upon the storage conditions inputted through the input unit, a corresponding reference storage temperature stored in the storage unit, and the temperature of the storage chamber detected by the temperature detecting unit.
According to another embodiment of the present invention, a method of controlling a refrigerator for cosmetics, wherein the refrigerator has a storage chamber and a cooling unit to cool the storage chamber, the method comprises setting one or more storage conditions, searching for one of a plurality of reference storage temperatures, each of which are predetermined to correspond to one of a plurality of possible storage conditions, the one reference storage temperature corresponding to the set storage condition, and operating the cooling unit to maintain a temperature of the storage chamber at the searched reference storage temperature.